Clarity on the investment climate

Dear reader

Most of you might have expected a decline in investments in Swiss start-ups. How strong the decrease actually was in the first half of 2023 is surprising even for insiders. Almost CHF 1.2 billion was invested – a drop of 54% compared with the same period of the previous year, as our update to Swiss Venture Capital Report shows. Start-ups from the digitalisation sectors, ICT, fintech and healthcare IT, attracted only a quarter of the capital that was available in the first half of 2022.

How long the situation will last is difficult to say. The majority of the approximately 100 Swiss investors who responded to the survey for our update believe that the bottom has been reached and are generally more optimistic than a year ago. At the same time, a larger proportion of investors want to focus on investments in existing portfolio companies in the next 12 months than was the case a year ago. You can find more informative results and the complete figures on investments in our update, which we publish together with the investor association SECA and in partnership with startup.ch.

In the last few weeks, I have met more and more start-up CEOs who in the challenging situation are concentrating on increasing sales and getting as close as possible to profitability. As uncertain as the situation is at the moment, this strategy is certainly not wrong and it often leads to greater interest from investors. In any case, the three start-ups that secured investments this week have shown market traction. The most money went to Verity: the drone start-up secured an additional USD 11 million and gained Qualcomm Ventures as an investor. BODDY, the start-up that operates a platform where travellers can search for and book fitness and wellness offers, secured USD 2.2 million. And USD 600,000 went to the Ticino-based smart grid start-up Hive Power.

DeepJudge and Daimani can also boast successes in their markets. DeepJudge has won major Swiss law firms as regular customers and is on a global expansion course. Daimani enables sports entertainment group DAZN to embed a ticket marketplace in the DAZN app. In terms of customers, HR-tech start-up Flowit is also doing well, so well that the company has been able to finance its expansion without investors.

However, deeptech start-ups need financial resources in the first phase and this makes funding programmes all the more important. Five new projects will be funded by Innobooster over the next 18 months, and in addition two Innogrants have been awarded. Qai Ventures has just started, with two Swiss start-ups selected for the first cohort.

Applications are open for the LeadiNNg to Scale-up programme from Innovaud and IMD. And you can vote for your favourite start-up in the public vote at the Top 100 Swiss Startup Awards until 23 July.

Have a good weekend.
Stefan Kyora

Editor in Chief, Startupticker.ch